It"s been a tiring week.

There's been knitting - a scarf finished, a scarf started (the VHC made it clear that he wanted a scarf too - 'a boo one'), some trees, and a small experimental vessel. It's 2" tall, and the same diameter, and I think it's cute! Useless, but cute.

There was the Contemporary Textiles Workshop, wherein we did things with lace. We made collagraph plates to use with pasta machines (as you do) and printed them...

and some of us made book covers. You can see what a good collection I have of not very nice lace. 

The cover looks a bit better painted, but is a bit bright for my taste. I think Markals might be called for.

And some book of the week making. Not, as you might expect, using the book cover I made in CTW (I'm waiting for the paint to dry.) Not using the Visual Marks challenge cover, which is still awaiting assembly. Instead I came across these, and adapted them slightly to use up an old file envelope and some of the lined paper we seem to have infinite supplies of. (Can you spot the deliberate mistake?) The photographs are a bit misleading, it is more mauve than purple.

It has become my 'to do' list. I'm already onto the third page.

That all may not look much, but I feel knackered (I suspect I am going down with a cold). 

I also made an unexpected discovery. About 25 years ago, when we moved into this house, long before I started using computers, I bought some printed address labels.  And then they disappeared. After a desultory search, I assumed I'd thrown the envelope away by mistake and hand wrote everything.

This week the drawer under the envelope drawer, in which I'd put them, stopped closing properly. Eventually I got the grabber - a sort of opposable thumb and finger on a stick - in order to poke around behind it. (The drawers are difficult to take out and require girding of loins, stiffening of sinews and summoning of blood.) 

There were a lot of envelopes down there, some greetings cards, an application form for a car licence - and my address labels.

We have been talking about downsizing, so they were bound to reappear. Mind you, we have been talking about downsizing for years...

Life has its little ups and downs.

The week started badly when our child minding journey took nearly three times as long as it normally does - overturned lorry. At the moment, luckily, we are going later and not taking the little guys to school, so there was no desperate need to get there on time, but then if we had been doing our customary silly o'clock trip, we would probably have missed the worst of the congestion. 

The second down of the week was this. I do know how to turn a heel, honest: but when you get too engrossed in wildly improbable British detective series you can end up turning it twice. Yes, I confess, we were watching 'Midsomer Murders'.

For those not au fait with sock knitting, 'turning the heel' is the process which changes a vertical tube which fits the leg, to a horizontal tube which fits the foot. Working two heels, as I did, would give a sock which turned through 180 rather than 90 degrees. I'd already pulled it out once because it was too narrow, so it took three attempts to get it right. 

The pattern is an adaptation of this one with different heels and toes, but the errors I made are all mine. 

However, those downs were more than balanced by the ups, chiefly the completion of numbers 3 (well, in part) and 4 on last week's 'to do' list.

1. Dionne Swift's course.

2. The book of the week.

3. My piece for Visual Marks, plus making some stamps, both for next month.

4. The self-imposed nine part series for Contemporary Textiles Workshop, for after Easter.

5. Knitting.

Here are the stamps, and my test stampings.  The image in the centre shows the cloth we painted at Visual Marks, which inspired it all. What we are going to do with them will be revealed at the next meeting...

And this is my 3D, fit-in-a-coffee-cup series. (Yeh, right. Individually, maybe, sort of.) From top left to bottom right, washers, paper coils, laced broken chopstircks, knitted worms I cord, embroidery (!), wrapped pipe cleaners, gathered cloth, sprayed paper balls, buttons.

 

I realised that although my original intention had been to represent everyone's marks from the original exercise, (see left), I'd ended up mostly doing circles and lines. So I converted the sort-of-leaf shapes into spirals, made some more lines and circles, constructed an outer box and called it done.

I enjoyed doing it, which is probably why I let it take priority over more urgent things. I've made odd little things in boxes before, and there may possibly be more in my future, when I've decided what I want to do when I grow up - apart from being Scandinavian, which is already decided (or Welsh). (Indecisive, moi?)

Today I've started my challenge for Visual Marks - the thing which has to be a 16" oval collage, including lace and felt, inspired by the sea, and sea green in colour. 

The first two criteria were my biggest problem - I usually work smaller or much bigger than 16", and the thought of a 16" oval was very scary uninspirational. But then I realised that A3 paper is just over 16" on the longer side, and if you fold it in half you get A4-ish book pages. So I could make a book and put a sea themed oval cartouche on the front. That was a step forward, but I was fixated on the idea that the cartouche would have to contain a representational image of the sea - you know, beach, sea, sky, waves, maybe a dinghy and some seagulls - and I don't do representational. Plus I had a bit of Shakespeare running through my head - this bit.

    Full fathom five thy father lies; 

              Of his bones are coral made; 

    Those are pearls that were his eyes: 

              Nothing of him that doth fade, 

    But doth suffer a sea-change 

    Into something rich and strange.                 

My problem was solved when I decided that 'something rich and strange' could be silks, satins, beads, maybe a few pearls - in crazy patchwork. Well, crazy patchwork is sort of like collage, isn't it? So, after Googling how to draw an oval, I started. 

So now my list looks like this:

1. This week's work for Dionne's course -which I intend to tackle tomorrow.

2. The Visual Marks crazy patchwork for next month.

3. Book of the week - also for tomorrow, unless I run out of time, when number 2 will have to stand in.

4. The other sock. Preferably without three attempts at the heel.

How to set priorities and manage your time. By an expert.

I knew this was going to be a busy week, including as it did a birthday do, two childminding days and a meeting of Visual Marks. 

The birthday do (mine) was at Winchester Science Centre (followed by cake at home) and I think that a good time was had by all.

I can't comment on the quality of the Visual Marks session because I led it this month, talking about using mind maps, word association etc. in designing. We played an adaptation of 'embroidery consequences', which I found here. As a result I have to make a 16", oval collage, which includes lace and felt, which is inspired by the sea, and, which, fortuitously, is sea green in colour. And as it was my idea I feel obliged to have a go. Add all that to the book of the week, the work for Contemporary Textiles and the ongoing knitting, and I had plenty to do.

Unfortunately I had forgotten that an on-line course I had signed up for started this week.

The course is Dionne Swift's 'Drawing for Textiles' and having previously taken her 'Developing Sketchbooks' course, (it was good, that's why I signed up for another one) I knew that she would be giving us plenty to do - and I couldn't start till Wednesday.

So in the best principles of time management I made a prioritised list.

1. Dionne's course - daily exercises of up to an hour, to be done this week.

2. The book of the week - for this weekend.

3. My piece for Visual Marks, plus making some stamps, both for next month.

4. The self-imposed nine part series for Contemporary Textiles Workshop, which is so far away I'm not   

    even sure when it is - certainly after Easter...

5. Knitting - no time pressure. (Whew!) 

Knitting is an evening, slumped in front of the telly recovering from the day activity, so it gets done no matter what, and I managed to finish the mittens which started off as socks, and start another pair of socks. (The mittens, and the cowl I made earlier, will, of course, ensure there is no repeat of last year's end of March snow.)

So what did I spend Wednesday and Friday doing? 

These, for CTW.

Plus I've got the makings of two more, and then there's this, using a twisted cord I made earlier. It seemed like a good idea at the time. 

I know what it makes me think of, but if W thinks I'm making another and wearing them, he's being uncharacteristically optimistic.

To be fair to myself, I have spent today having fun layering blind contour drawings, tracing shadows (when there were any shadows to trace), and drawing curved objects using 30cm or 10cm straight lines. Next up is drawing with different media on a long stick, and pattern making with extracts from the drawings - but I've got an app for that... Next week we move on to textiles.

After that I was knackered - so I thought I'd make the book. Earlier in the week, in a fit of optimism, I had pulled out my Tarot Artists' Book Ideation Cards, which suggested I make a manifesto based (!?!), whimsical book, with an asymmetrical, innovative structure, in neutral, muted or pastel colours, including transparency and pockets or windows, using high tech techniques and abstract, non-verbal or garbled text, and collaborating with another artist for the images. So no pressure there. 

Needless to say, I decided to ignore all that and make something really simple and quick. I pulled out Esther K. Smith's 'How to Make Books' which has some interesting versions of simple forms, and spotted an 'instant book' made from an envelope. Good, I have envelopes. 

I happened to choose one with a window in it.  

You may be able to see where this is leading...

A transparent window! That's two of the nine Ideation Card criteria!

I went back the list. 

I thought I could describe it as whimsical, and the colour was muted, so that's another four out of nine. But it wasn't asymmetrical. Could I fold an asymmetrical one? Three books later (you can see them bottom right - the first book, one try-out which worked, one attempt at the real thing which didn't work because I didn't follow the techniques I'd tried out, and my final successful attempt) I had my book. And I decided it was innovative. So that was six! I was two thirds of the way there!

The next problem was to decide what 'manifesto-based' meant. Well, I still don't know, but I know what a manifesto is, so I wrote my own, and used Wingdings to type it out (high tech and garbled text in one go!). I was rather pleased that the Wingdings symbol for the first letter of the title is a bomb, it seemed appropriately manifesto-ish, although mine is entirely peaceful.

So there was just the collaborative image. Well, I can't claim that whoever designs clip art for Microsoft knew s/he was collaborating with me, but, with some difficulty, I found an image which suited my manifesto and added that. (Microsoft were very happy to sell me an expensive copy of Word for my Mac, but whatever I paid them clearly was not enough to persuade them to make it easy to find or download clip art from their website...)

So much for my quick, simple book!

Tomorrow will be spent drawing with things on sticks and making stamps. Or not, as the case may be.

* i assume that you, gentle reader, recognise irony when you meet it. 

Where was I?

As I remember, bracing myself for the invasion of the little guys. But before that, I went to another session of the Contemporary Textiles Workshop, which was not what quite what I was expecting. We had been told to bring sticks and wire, so I was anticipating 3D constructions of a type I've done before. 

We started with a communal mark making activity on paper, similar to those we've done at Visual Marks. We picked a mark and made it repeatedly on each sheet of paper, using a variety of media. The papers were torn up, and we all got 4 pieces to inspire us in working on a series ('a series is more than two') of 3D pieces. Which had to fit into a cup.

The marks included circles, spirals, leaf and tree like marks, and my split circle with a line through it which has developed from my initials. The difficulty was, of course, moving from 2D to 3D, but in my bedtime reading I'd come across some designs made with what I can only describe as overgrown quilling, in circular frames. Inspired by the circle and spirals I decided to use torn paper strips to make short tubes (now what does that remind me of?), but in a square frame because it was easier to do. I measured the tutor's rather large cup to make sure it would fit. It will, provided I don't get too enthusiastic about making it reach the bottom. Or much beyond the lip, really...

One thing led to another and before long I had two frames. The contents of the second were made from some mono-printed fabric with spirals on it, although as I gathered it you can't see them. However the graininess of the print resembles some of the marks.

I have since made another frame, with added buttons. Circles again. The colour scheme is pretty repetitive for me, too. I have a mad ambition to make 9 in total, and fit them in an outer frame, hence the pile of recycled and painted sushi chopsticks, (which were not the sticks I'd taken and which are now not going to become another piano hinge book). I think things may drift a little from the original inspiration, however...

Everything went onto the back burner, of course, while the little guys were here. The new sleeping arrangements were given their seal of approval - to the extent that we had to go upstairs every couple of hours to look at 'my new Thomas bed'. It was the first thing mummy and daddy were shown when they came to collect the pair. Babybel assured me that the horse blanket was exactly what she had wanted when she asked me to make her one, so that was a success too.

Since Sunday, however, things have not been so successful. The latest pair of socks has been frogged as I realised that there was just not enough wool to make two. I started a pair of mittens/hand warmers (depending on wool consumption) but the first one has also been frogged because I realised that my stitch count was off, and I needed a bigger size.

And my plans to make another 6 framed 3D constructions were put on one side when I got caught up in a major workroom re-organisation. Since last autumn I have been slowly working through all the books in my workroom, deciding which ones to keep, and which to get rid of. (Local charity shops will be receiving several bags of books.)

I wasn't intending to tackle the shelf full of sketchbooks after I had finished all the proper books*and I can't remember now how I got started, but once I had, I had to finish. Most of what I used to call 'sketchbooks' pre C&G, were just scrapbooks, and my tastes have clearly changed since then, so the majority of those have gone in the recycling. (One of the few advantages of having used glue stick is that it was very easy to remove the few images I did want to keep.)

I have preserved almost all of the proper 'sketchbooks' - not that there are many 'sketches' in them, mostly cut paper, prints etc. I was pleased by how interesting I found the pre- and post-degree ones - and surprised by how uninspiring the degree ones were - perhaps a reflection of my lack of confidence about what I was doing? 

After I'd sorted the sketchbooks, I had to rearrange all the other books. Good exercise with floor to ceiling shelves. But I now have much less junk on the work surface - all my works in progress in their cat litter trays are neatly stacked on some of the emptied shelves. It won't stay neat for long - and 'neat' is, of course, a relative term...

Apart from the sorting and unknitting, not much creative has happened, although I did find time one insomniac night to make a series of books of the week, using the inspirational papers from CTW. 

And we managed some gallery visits. We had a day off from grandchild minding on Monday, so went down to Walford Mill to see the Cabinets of Curiosities exhibition - some good stuff. And on Wednesday between Wensleydale's haircut and my birthday lunch, we went to the Discovery Centre to see 'Hidden' - massive photographs of people like Hilda of Whitby and Tom Paine, and events like the Peasants' Revolt and the Swing Riots. No, photography wasn't invented then, but Red Saunders has recreated them on a large and dramatic scale. The accompanying video was well worth looking at, too.

Now I've written all that lot, I wonder why I feel I haven't done much?

*well, those in the workroom - there are a few more in the spare bedroom, which will get the treatment soon. 

Finished!

Or maybe not...

This is the repetitous Contemporary Textile Workshop piece. I wasn't sure about adding machine stitch, as instructed, but it worked quite well in the end, introducing a new texture and bringing out some of the details. I also used the machine stitch to attach the canvas work to a very blingy bit of lamé fabric, which is just visible through the holes in the canvas, but also provided the means to attach the embroidery to the box canvas. However my stretching of the fabric over the box canvas left a little to be desired, so tomorrow the staples are coming out and it will be reattached.

Unfortunately the Chairman's Challenge, a.k.a. the star spangled sampler is going to need a bit more work. The edges need top stitching, the top needs adjusting, and I think it might benefit from a bit of weight at the bottom to make it hang better - I'm thinking beaded tassels.

Apart from that, they are both finished!

The Traveller's Blanket has been languishing, due to this frenzy of finishing - I'm hoping to get round to assembling the layers tomorrow and then beginning to think about how to use the African fabrics.

'Visual Marks" came around again for this month. We shared our Chairman's Challenges, finished and unfinished  - amazing the variety of things we came up with, from my banner to panels, a bag, Christmas cards and a cracker! 

Then we enjoyed some 'machine networking' - work some machining on a piece of felt, pass it to your neighbour, and repeat until your own piece comes back to you - assuming you recognise it when it does! 

We were going to try both automatic stitches and free motion, but ran out of time. 

Initially I wasn't very inspired, but the ideas are beginning to flow now - inlaid appliqué? Book covers? 

And of course I played around with some apps - Flipomatic, Mirrorgram, and, surprise surprise, iColorama.

So, plenty to keep me busy. And if I run out of things to do, there are always socks...

Slow but steady...

progress on several fronts.

1. One pair of socks finished and another started. Somehow I always have more wool left from each pair than I'm prepared to throw away, so the half ball of mid blue had to be incorporated in the new pair - yes, it is the same colour. I did manage to bin the few metres of the light blue left over after I got two pairs out of it.

2. The Chair's Challenge seems to have taken a great leap forward. (Good thing, since it's the next meeting of Visual Marks on Tuesday. Time to get lost in Southampton again.)

This is it, hanging around while I decide whether it needs anything on that lower red horizontal band. It is going to get some star sequins on the Tyvek rectangle at the bottom, and there are paper stars on the red on black lattice - they just don't photograph well.

It is not attached to the backing yet - when it is, it will be a little straighter. 

I have no idea how I am going to suspend it, and I fancy a few tassels somewhere, but these decisions will be made in due course...

3. Progress on the Contemporary Textile Workshop piece has been slower, partly because I've been concentrating on the star spangled sampler above, and partly because the CTW is cross stitch, and regular readers will know that I don't do cross stitch, especially not in uncontrollable metallic machine embroidery thread. 

4. And just in case I didn't have enough to do, I've signed up for Dijanne Cervaal's 'Traveller's Blanket' class, because it looked like a good way to use up some stash. So I started by buying some muslin (I thought I had lots, and will probably find it again now I've bought some), and some bump, which Dijanne  recommends instead of wadding. So yesterday was spent dyeing, which I haven't done for ages.

Here are the results, plus some threads I dyed at the same time, and some African fabrics from my stash for the appliqué.

Did you know that so-called 'African fabrics' were based on Indonesian batiks and originally made in Holland or Lancashire? Must be true, it said so in 'Embroidery' magazine. So some of my Lancastrian ancestors may have worked on the original fabrics, though I am pretty sure these were made a long way from the North of England.

Bite off more than I can chew? Moi?

Lots of excitement this week...

if you live a very quiet life, that is.

Socks were finished...

and started. There wasn't enough of the pale blue left  to make another pair, and not very much of the mid blue, so I am knitting quickly to finish before the wool runs out. 

It was Contemporary Textile Workshop this week. Unfortunately the tutor who was scheduled to lead it is ill (get well soon, T!) so no-one was sure precisely what she had in mind, except that it included tapestry canvas, potato prints, sheers, hand embroidery, machine embroidery, added embellishments and a square box frame. More or less in that order.

This is my response to the magical mystery tour. As you can probably tell, the hand stitch has not yet been completed. (Cross stitch? Me?) 

And finally, the biggest excitement of all - Babybel had her first visit from the tooth fairy! (I have no idea what the going rate is for teeth these days, but I bet it's more than sixpence, which it was in my day. That's 2.5p, for younger readers.)

Granny has inexplicably neglected to provide a tooth fairy cushion, so she spent a few minutes on Google in order to repair the omission. Most of them seem to be tooth shaped - but not the shape of baby teeth as I remember them - and any case that design seems quite unpleasant to me - so I shall have to keep looking, or invent something myself.

We hope for a quieter time next week  - if only to give granny time to make the tooth fairy cushion!

Bag and Baggage.

This is the bag. The VHC has taken to a little Christmas bag I made for his sister, and it has proved quite useful for carrying the things hè likes to take around with him. Like juice, and Thomas books, and other essentials. This was going to be a Christmas present, but I think he may get it early because it makes granny and granddad's life easier. The handle is like that because it is adjustable as one grows. I made it fairly quickly yesterday morning, with bits and bobs from the stadh.

The baggage, on the other hand, was not quickly made.

I could go on at great length about everything that went wrong, but I won't, because almost everything that could go wrong did. And if it did go right, I changed my mind about it...

It is some of the velvet which I roller-printed after the last CTW session. It was going to be a Dorothy bag, but after I found Alysn Midgelow-Marsden's instructions here for 'spice bags' it became this, although the techniques are different to hers. 

Much easier to construct, I thought, no setting in of bases or channels for pull cords. And the instructions were clear and it was indeed easier to construct - if I hadn't had to deconstruct it several times...

Still, I like the result. Totally useless of course, but a good way to show off a bit of stitching.

The other thing I finished this weekend was a third and final (?) blanket. I forgot to photograph it before I washed it and as I'm unwilling to wrestle it off the drier to repair the omission, you will just have to imagine a large, dark blue, square woolly thing. As I finished it half way through the last episode ever of 'Borgen', (sob, sob, weep, weep) I had to find some more subtitle-reading knitting, so I started something very slightly smaller.

Socks. I have too much sock wool, although not as much too much as I had Shetland, so Saturday nights,  for the foreseeable future until I get bored, will be sock knitting nights. Assuming there are subtitles to read, although 'The Bridge' seems to be returning in the New Year. Worth watching if you missed it the first time, and even if you didn't.

This afternoon has been spent wrestling with a Christmas tree (him) and with present wrapping and card writing (me). Soon to be followed, I hope, by a cup of tea and a mince pie. I am generally of the Scrooge persuasion at Christmas, but some things I like - mince pies, trees, and school Christmas concerts. We went to one of those last week, and have another at nursery this week. Can't wait!

The last time...

I forgot to show you this - my first handspun in place. The change of colour is where I changed from spinning Leicester to spinning merino. Having no taste, I preferred the Leicester - and not just because of the romantic associations of that county, which is where I was proposed to - and accepted.

I had hoped to show you these, finished too, but the fates decreed otherwise. (Those are not tacking stitches on the grapes. I found an image of some 3d-ish grapes supposedly worked by Mary Queen of Scots, where she had stitched pentagons and hexagons round the grapes - so I did too.)

Together with their partners they have been applied to a Vilene backing and then removed, to be reapplied using my walking foot. And the method of hingeing (sp?) the pages together is - er - under consideration. 

In between those bits, I have started two more - I do like to have plenty too much to do. There is some very experimental stuff inspired by the last Visual Marks session, which is so experimental it may be consigned to a sketch book - or the bin - and some quilting on a bit of this, inspired by CTW, which is intended to become a completely non-functional bag.

And finally - if you can get to this, and you are interested in textiles, Kate Plumtree's bird inspired ballgowns are stunning. I'd like 'Magpie 1’ in a slightly bigger size and with sleeves, please - although I have no idea where I'd wear it...

There are work books to look at, and fabric samples to feel, and the displays in the gardens and in the rest of the house are pretty good too! We are hoping to go back with our cygnet princess and caterpiller prince soon.

Where did the last two weeks go?

I won't bore you by telling you, but we have been a little busy. 

'Visual Marks' was all about drawing. We all brought items which, for us, symbolised 'connections', which were used to assemble a still life. We then drew it from different positions. Now, as you may have gathered, I am not a confident drawer, and it took me quite a while to settle in to this exercise, so my efforts will not receive widespread publicity. However, inspired by some of the things our chair, E had done with the previous session's group graffiti, I did play around with them in a couple of apps.

These were produced using Mirrorgram, Flipomatic and Kaleidoscope apps for the iPad. (It was Mirrogram which produced all the helmeted warriors!) I learned that the effects work best if you zoom in to very small details.

I also tried the low tech approach of using tracing paper and picking out interesting shapes from two blind contour drawings, one in chalk, one in oil pastel, on top of each other.

More little figures emerged.

I'm not sure how these will develop into stitch, if at all, as I have ideas for a couple of the drawings I did direct onto cloth, and which have been ripped up to be reassembled in a new improved format. Maybe.

You have no workshops for a while and then two come along at once. Last  Friday was Contemporary Textile Workshop day. We took in images of 'landmarks' - in my case, photos of organic and inorganic things on the ground, like twigs, leaves, puddles and gratings - which we used to inspire hand made stamps.

Like these - a mixture of eraser and fun foam stamps, plus a new idea I found here. I modified the idea slightly, because I forgot the suggestion to use a paint roller to hold the pipe insulation, until now... 

I made a miniature rolling pin by inserting a smaller tube into the pipe lagging - in this case, the inner tube from some ready rolled icing. (Or it may have been marzipan - in either case, I knew it would come in useful one day.) The inner tube was slightly too small, but wrapping it in duck tape solved that problem.

I used a Fiskars craft knife to slice and dig the foam out - the sharper the better! And as my friend A. suggested, instead of cutting away, you could apply or wrap things on the surface of the foam, like string, lace, rubber bands, self adhesive fun foam etc. 

The gold and turquoise sections above were done at home, printing on to black fabric, including stretch velvet. My current plan is to make a bag with it, once I've finished the plant images for VM - three down, one to go.

This week should be a bit quieter than last, so I hope to have the time and the energy to pick uo a needle!

Despite the weather...

(fortunately we were out of range of the Hampshire tornado) - and despite having a cold - I've had a busy and productive week. 

After Sandy's kind comments last week, I dipped the top of the wonky brown paper cylinder in some walnut ink, then tuned it right way up to drip.

I'm very pleased with the result, which looks distinctly landscapeish to me. It needs some stitch now, to make the most of those trees. 

I haven't got round to it because of exciting day out number 1.

Exciting day out number 1.

Recently I was invited to join a new textile/mixed media group, 'Visual Marks'. The first meeting was on Tuesday, in an area of deepest Southampton I've never been to before (wrong side of the river), so I fired up our new (and first) satnav, gritted my teeth and set off.

And got there and back safely and much quicker than expected - by me, the satnav was spot on. It was even better once I'd told it to avoid toll bridges...

The journey (and the parking) were the most traumatic bits, the session was fun. We did some mark making, as you might expect, given the group name. 

Group mark making, on quite a large scale - one piece in black and white, one in colour. Everyone got a bit of each to bring home and be inspired by.

These are my bits.

I scanned them, so they look a bit fragmented. 

Given the way my mind has been working recently, I rolled up my black and white chunk and thought 'vessel'.

So here's the beginnings, inspired by those chains of 'beads' on the original.

I got quite excited by the idea of beads, as that night we watched a good but too short programme about the Cheapside Hoard, from which I learned that Tudor  grandees were sewn into their jewellry - those long enamelled chains were sewn down to hold them in place. (That link will  take you to the exhibition website, but try Google images for pictures of the actual jewellry - it's stunning!

That led me on to blackwork, for the black and white piece, and Tudor embroidery for the coloured one. No idea if that's how they will end up, but it's how they are starting...

I took a little time out from thinking about - and researching - Tudor embroidery, and exploring ideas in my sketch book, to finish (?) the tesselation. 

Bird side up at the top, bunny side up at the bottom - I hope you can see them! 'Finish' gets a question mark because at the moment it's just a piece of quilting. I think it may become a bag for Babybel in due course.

Exciting day out number 2

The last event in a busy week was another 'neuf' meeting. Our multitalented member Nicky ran a session for us on working with glass. This was in the wilds of Hampshire rather than the depths of Southampton, so the satnav came into its own again. (It took me there one way and brought me back a different one - no idea if that is normal for satnavs but it made life interesting...)

In the session we all made a clock - Nicky even provided movements, and I can confirm that it keeps good time. Even if the placement of the blobs in mine is a lttle wonky. 

Then my colleagues made some exciting 'glass appliqué' images and I - didn't.

I was really taken with this glass, I just wish I had done it justice. I found the glass very hard to cut, hence the erratic edges. I don't see working with glass in my future, but despite that I enjoyed the session. And we needed a clock!

Next week should be a little quieter, except that our long anticipated, much needed new sofas should arrive on Wednesday, so I will no longer need to apologise to guests for the uncomfortable seating!

Endings and Beginnings

After spending a lot of time odd minutes here and there wondering what to do with these...

I poured the remains of a bottle of blue-black Quink into the smaller one. As you do.

As you can see, it spread up the sides in an interesting way. Osmosis - I think. No idea why it looks green on the bottom, though - and it's not just the camera, it really is greeny blue. 

It may not be completely finished - do I add stitch?  Wensleydale says not, as it looks like ceramic, but that makes me wonder whether I should be even making things that look like ceramic in fabric? Isn't a bit like making plastic things that look like wood? 

Long time readers of this blog may remember me wittering on about Tamsin van Essen who has certainly influenced me in making these, as, of course, has Edmund de Waal. Maybe I'm a potter in embroidere's clothing?

The wonky brown paper one definitely doesn't look like ceramic. I'm thinking of making it a sinamay jacket, except that my bit of sinamay isn't quite big enough...

This really is finished - inspiration on the right, completed embroidery on the left, with 5p to show how small it is. Got to use up some of that fine gauge canvas before my eyes get too bad to see what I'm doing with it! 

The beginning that has followed that ending is another piece inspired by the Contemporary Textile Workshop session last week. As I'm sure you can see, this is tesselated birds and rabbits - although I've just realised that if you turn the birds upside down they become rabbits.

I drew out the pattern, painted the birds with transfer paint, and ironed it on to some polyester satin - the duller back side, I resisted the tempation to go for the full bling. Now it's going to get some quilting, which hopefully will make it more obvious what it is.

And finally - a finished subtitle-reading blanket, and the makings of another one. I think this is the last of my oddments of machine knitting wool, so this should be the last blanket.

Does anyone else find that you tend to finish different things that you are working on around the same time, or is it just me?

Whoops, forgot these.  I found this bit of card, which I haved obviously used under some painting, when I was having a clearout. I was going to chuck it away, but it said 'sketch book covers' to me, so that's what it became. So that's a beginning and an ending in one -or three.